Striking quarantine officials at sea and airports around the country are being stood down and docked pay by their employer the Agriculture Department, which accuses them of endangering the nation's bio-security.
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The news comes as the Immigration Department prepares to renew its legal bid on Thursday to stop its Border Force officials from taking strike action, arguing that the stop-work protests are endangering national security.
But the claims by the department are either false or overblown, according to the CSPU, the union representing the Agriculture and Immigration public servants.
Biosecurity workers employed by the Agriculture Department who have been taking action at airports alongside their counterparts in the Immigration Department have been either stood down or docked pay for taking part in the two-hour stoppages, the CPSU said on Wednesday.
The department has been contacted for comment.
The union and the Immigration Department will resume its battle in the Fair Work Commission on Thursday morning, with the CPSU looking to lift a ban on the airports strikes imposed by the commission early this week after the department argued that national security was at risk.
Meanwhile, the Australian Taxation Office will hold another ballot late in April of its 18,000 public servants in an attempt to convince them to sign a new enterprise agreement.
The ATO's bosses say they have improved the offer that was crushed by a margin of 85 per cent in the last ballot in late 2015, while fresh ballots are also expected soon at the giant Defence and Human Services departments.
Elsewhere, about 60 public servants working at the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner have voted to accept a deal under the government's contentious bargaining policy, bringing the number of enterprise agreements in place under the policy to 46.
But about 120,000 members of of the 150,000-strong public service are either in dispute or have not yet accepted an agreement, with workers at Canberra's National Library voting last week by a margin of 75 per cent to reject the institution's latest offer.
CPSU national secretary Nadine Flood described the move by the Agriculture Department against its striking workers are "harsh and unreasonable".
"This latest development from the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources is yet another harsh and unreasonable escalation of this dispute," she said.
"These quarantine and biosecurity workers have been taking industrial action alongside the rolling strikes by Immigration and Border Force officers that we're fighting for in the Fair Work Commission.
"Agriculture staff would never take action that compromised biosecurity, any more than Immigration and Border Protection officers would ever compromise national security."
But Public Service Commissioner John Lloyd said Immigration Department officials had better jobs than many private sector workers and that their union was engaged in an aggressive industrial campaign.
"It ... is remarkable that the CPSU is running such an aggressive industrial campaign in the Department of Immigration and Border Protection," the commissioner said.
"By any measure, the conditions in the DIBP agreement are good and well in excess of what many in the private sector enjoy.
"Most people would be wondering what all the fuss was about,"
"It is as if the CPSU is seeking a workplace relevance that is beyond its membership representation."
